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Last week’s episode of Powerless brought an out of season snow, as in Cold Season poor Emily learns that in a certain time of the year, all the ice-based supervillains visit Charm City and freeze everything in sight. Many of them are named: Mr. Freeze, Captain Cold, Killer Frost, Minister Blizzard… but, among these, eventually it’s Frostbite to make an appearance. In the show, she doesn’t do anything but sliding around on ice, freezing everything in sight (Crimson Fox included) and laughing maniacally. She’s portrayed only in CGI, and no actress is credited for the laughter, so as for now she’s just another background character… more or less like she is in the comics, another forgotten villain who made a single appearance in the 1990s, never to be seen again. Let’s see together.

Not much is known about Frostbite prior to her arrival on New Earth, not even her true name. She was born on planet Qward, a technologically advanced world… located in the Anti-Matter Universe, the mirror reality created by the deranged Krona. In the Anti-Matter Universe, everything was the opposite of the Positive Matter Universe, and its inhabitants followed the same rule: what was heroic on one universe was villainous on the other and vice versa. At a certain point in her life, this woman acquired ice-generating powers, created the masked identity of Frostbite (the evil counterpart to our universe’s Ice), and started oppressing the population with cruel and sadistic deeds, usually enjoying robberies and thefts. After some time of lonely activity, she joined forces with other masked criminals from Qward: the archer Deadeye (an evil Green Arrow), the pyrokinetic Fiero (counterpart to Fire), the rubbery Elasti-Man (counterpart to Plastic Man), the matter-manipulating Element Man (Metamorpho‘s double), the armored Scarab (doppelgänger of Blue Beetle) and the speedster Slipstream (an evil version of The Flash). Together, the criminals formed a new Crime Syndicate, and became the terror of the local population. This new Syndicate could obtain whatever they wanted… but soon they got the chance to have even more, thanks to an inexperienced dimensional traveler and superhero wannabe with the unlikely name of Norman the Doorman, from the Positive Matter Universe.

In the other universe, on Earth, the companywoman Claire Montgomery had created a corporate-sponsored superhero team known as The Conglomerate as a competitor to the Justice League International, run by her ex-husband Maxwell Lord. When she lost control of the team after its on-field leader Booster Gold‘s rebellion, she needed a replacement… and she found it thanks to Norman the Doorman, who opened a portal to what he believed to be Earth-Two and recruited the Crime Syndicate mistaking them for superheroes. Frostbite and the others accepted the invitation, happy to have another universe to raid. For first, Montgomery had them compete with the JLI in a pay-per-view event, with the aim of discrediting her ex-husband and proving her team superior. The JLI was mostly composed of the counterparts of the Syndicate: the third Flash, Blue Beetle, Plastic Man, Fire… and obviously Ice, Frostbite’s double. The show was held as programmed, with Green Lantern, Booster Gold and Power Girl joining the JLI… and it was the latter that revealed that the New Conglomerate wasn’t surely from Earth-Two, her home dimension, and that they were impostors. Exposed, the “heroes” revealed their true colors, and started battling the JLI live on television. Obviously, Frostbite targeted her double, Ice, in a battle that ended exactly in the opposite way Claire Montgomery had hoped for: not only the New Conglomerate was defeated, thus proving the superiority of Max Lord’s team, but Montgomery herself was also accused of exposing the entire world to an extra-dimensional threat by bringing dangerous super-criminals on Earth. Defeated, Frostbite and the others were sent back to Qward, while the consequences of their single visit reshaped the balance of powers on Earth…

Frostbite is a violent and greedy woman, a sadistic robber who enjoys torturing defenseless civilians and to raid cities for money and fun. She possesses the ability to create ice and snow emitting extremely cold temperatures from her hands, but how her powers work or their source, if its’ magical like her Positive Matter counterpart or something else, is unknown. Just as evil and devious as Ice is heroic and selfless, Frostbite is a super-powered raider with a taste for violence, with a heart as cold as her name suggests.